


Paterfamilias

by Daegaer



Series: Burning Rome [5]
Category: Weiss Kreuz
Genre: 1st Century CE, AU, Gen, Magic, Rome - Freeform, Schwarz - Freeform, lost gods, psychic powers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-19
Updated: 2010-07-19
Packaged: 2017-10-13 00:57:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/131041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daegaer/pseuds/Daegaer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Plans begin to be made for revenge</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paterfamilias

"Caratacus," Sesithacus said, looking askance at the man curled up on his pallet. Was he asleep again? It was getting harder and harder to tell. He had said he would only lie down for a little complaining that the brightness and the heat of the sun made his head ache with sickness. Sesithacus had managed to put a hand on his forehead and was shocked at how feverish he had felt. "It's evening now, we'll be wanted soon. All those wealthy Roman women who want you to tell their fortunes - Caratacus?"

"Do you think they'd like me to describe how the flames will run up their dresses, how their golden wigs made of Teuton girls' hair will catch and sear?" Caratacus said in a voice that might have come from the midst of a dream. He opened his eyes and smiled at Sesithacus, seeming to look through him to a sight as longed-for as the face of his true love. "How they'll scream, Sesithacus, all these pox-ridden whores."

Sesithacus shivered. All three of the others were becoming worse and worse, he thought. He was the only one not a madman. "We're living well," he said, gently enough, and reaching out to feel if the fever had abated any. Caratacus batted his hand away with the ease of a man who had his full sight. "What good does vengeance give you? Isn't it better to live in peace?"

"If I want to hear the precepts of the slaves' new gods, I'll wait till I find myself a slave," Caratacus said shortly, and sat up, scrubbing his hands through his hair, leaving it wild, then smoothed down his long moustache carefully. "As I am a free man, I choose a free man's rights to revenge. Have some pride, Sesithacus."

"I don't need revenge on Rome," Sesithacus said, and stood. "I'm doing well enough here." _You owe him a debt of gratitude_ , he thought. _Perhaps you would have gone mad, like he said, if he and Februus hadn't taken you up._ He scowled at the thought. _Instead, I am a sane man chained to madmen._ "What do you want me to do?" he said, a sour twist to his mouth.

"Ask Sanagi to speak to his daughter."

"What? He's a _little boy_ , Caratacus! _What_ daughter? He's not old enough to sleep with a woman -"

Caratacus rose and stepped past him with a dry laugh. "Let's not keep the Romans waiting. Good slaves do not displease their masters."

"I'm no man's slave!" Sesithacus snapped.

"We are all the slaves of the gods," Caratacus said airily and pulled his cloak over his head, looking blearily through his unkempt hair. "Well, do I look mystic enough?"

"Every inch a Briton," Seisithacus said, putting aside his annoyance, and feeling a strange pleasure in making him laugh.

  


 

 

*

" - and so he said I should ask you to speak to your daughter," Sesithacus muttered, watching Sanagi crouching over a pattern of coloured stones he arranged and rearranged. There was no answer, not that he expected any. "I told him you wouldn't know how to so much as look at a woman, let alone get one with child -" Still no answer. Sanagi was not to be goaded today, it seemed. "I've spoken to you. There. It's done." He turned away, thinking he would walk in the city for a while. His awe at its size and grandeur was something he had no wish to admit to the others, not when they seemed so unmoved by it.

"Is it because of the fire?" Sanagi said behind him, the sounds of his Latin crisp and clear.

Sesithacus looked back. The boy was still crouched over his stones, but Sesithacus felt an uncomfortable prickle on his skin, as if he could hear the thoughts of a man watching him in secret. "Yes," he said. Then, "Sanagi, what has he said to you?"

"What he has said to us all," Sanagi said. "For such a sacrifice all the gods of the Romans and the gods of the Britons too will bend their eyes upon us." He picked up one of the stones and rolled it in his hand. "Don't you think they will notice us?" he asked wistfully, and sounded like the child he was.

"I don't see how they could avoid noticing us," Sesithacus said miserably. "Februus will have as many gods as he wishes to fight. The rest of us will have to accept our fate more meekly."

Sanagi nodded, and put his stone down in the very centre of the pattern. He stood up and met Sesithacus' eyes. "I will speak to my daughter," he said, and walked away, his thin childish limbs graceful in the sunlight.

Sesithacus looked down at the pattern he had made with his stones, the pebbles laid out in deliberate sharp-angled lines that looked like Sanagi thought they meant something. He frowned and bent down, looking closer, and touched the final stone with one finger. It rocked and fell into two neat halves, as clean a split as if a sharp knife had gone through a melon. With a soft _tick_ , every other stone fell into two halves also, the pattern looking briefly clear to Sesithacus, then dissolving into a jumble of broken pebbles.

He looked around the courtyard, but no one else had seen. The sun blazed down, and only Teutons and mad boys were fool enough to be out in it. Sesithacus slowly walked back indoors, feeling watched all the way.


End file.
